---
title: About Accessing the AWS S3 Object Store
---

PXF is installed with a connector to the AWS S3 object store. PXF supports the following additional runtime features with this connector:

- Overriding the S3 credentials specified in the server configuration by providing them in the `CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE` command DDL.
- Using the Amazon S3 Select service to read certain CSV and Parquet data from S3.

## <a id="s3_override"></a>Overriding the S3 Server Configuration with DDL

If you are accessing an S3-compatible object store, you can override the credentials in an S3 server configuration by directly specifying the S3 access ID and secret key via these custom options in the `CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE` `LOCATION` clause:

| Custom Option  | Value Description |
|-------|-------------------------------------|
| accesskey    | The AWS S3 account access key ID. |
| secretkey    | The secret key associated with the AWS S3 access key ID. |

For example:
<pre>CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE pxf_ext_tbl(name text, orders int)
  LOCATION ('pxf://S3_BUCKET/dir/file.txt?PROFILE=s3:text&SERVER=s3srvcfg<b>&accesskey=YOURKEY&secretkey=YOURSECRET</b>')
FORMAT 'TEXT' (delimiter=E',');</pre>

<div class="note warning"><b>Warning:</b> Credentials that you provide in this manner are visible as part of the external table definition. Do not use this method of passing credentials in a production environment.</div>

PXF does not support overriding Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and MinIO server credentials in this manner at this time.

Refer to [Configuration Property Precedence](cfg_server.html#override) for detailed information about the precedence rules that PXF uses to obtain configuration property settings for a Greenplum Database user.


## <a id="s3_select"></a>Using the Amazon S3 Select Service

Refer to [Reading CSV and Parquet Data from S3 Using S3 Select](read_s3_s3select.html) for specific information on how PXF can use the Amazon S3 Select service to read CSV and Parquet files stored on S3.
